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[I]f the public are bound to yield obedience to the laws, to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them.
—Samuel Adams, writing as Candidus, Essay in the Boston Gazette, (January 20, 1772)
Imagine if your son or daughter were charged with...

In a speech to the Conservative Women’s Conference in 1989, toward the end of her time as Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher took pride in declaring that “we in the Conservative Party are conviction politicians. We know what we believe. We hold fast to our beliefs. And when elected, we put...

All great historical periods and events are instructive. The Cold War is no exception. It offers lasting lessons that can help us deal with the challenges of the present and the future.
What, then, are the major lessons of the birth and death of the Cold War that can be applied...

The long War on Poverty has managed to eradicate 1960s-style poverty from our midst, or very nearly so—even if our federal authorities today are not competent to describe this accomplishment (or seemingly, even recognize the accomplishment in the first place). This is an important fact in favor of the War...

The great domestic challenge facing our country today is America’s large and growing Opportunity Deficit. Up and down our society—which used to be defined by unmatched economic growth and social flourishing—a new and unnatural sclerosis is taking hold. For millions of working families of or aspiring to our middle class,...

Do you do live interviews over your computer? Ron Nehring has eight tips for how to make them look good; here are the first three:
Ditch the headphones, this isn’t the subway. Those white Apple headphones with built in microphone might make you look cool, but on television they look ridiculous....

Is your messaging talking to the part of the brain that really controls behavior? According to Simon Sinek, most messaging puts the wrong information first: We talk about what and how instead of why. But if you start by talking about your purpose, then you will attract employees and colleagues...

It probably won’t shock anybody to learn that emails and meetings can be a big source of wasted time. But did you know that new software can help employees identify whether they are sending too many emails or calling too many meetings?
Sue Shellenbarger writes about the new applications, noting that...

How is your think tank’s organizational self-awareness? Are your leaders still playing the right roles to help the organization succeed? Assessing those questions can be a challenge, but it is necessary, says Jeffrey Cain:
As an organization develops, its leaders often fail to understand how their roles need to change. In...

Two suggestions for building your twitter followers, from Katerina Petropoulou
Curate the best content
Now that you know who your Twitter audience is, the goal is to tweet content they will find interesting enough to click on and share with their followers.
A good content curation system can help you save tons of time every day...

So you want to tell a story as part of a presentation. Great, but some ways of telling a story are better than others. JD Schramm has a few ideas on how to do it right:
Parachute in, don’t preamble. The best storytellers draw us immediately into the action. They capture...

Did someone say something about your organization on social media? Before you respond, think about these four points, which come from Spark Freedom’s “How to Protect Your Organization Online”:
1. Be Memorable. Find a unique way to say something, even if it’s just standard information or a factual point. By doing...

U.S. non-profit organizations received over $23 billion in bequest gifts in 2012, according to Giving USA: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2012. What makes this significant source of funding even more noteworthy is that less than 5 percent of all decedents over the age of 55 in...

ObamaCare doesn’t and can’t work. It is a rolling disaster that is wreaking havoc on the American economy and health care sector. Americans are experiencing first-hand the damage the law is doing. It is making their health insurance more expensive, driving doctors out of practice, and undermining the goal of...

The federal government owns nearly half of all land west of Nebraska, and it is increasingly using that ownership to cut Western states off from the natural resources and tax bases they need to take care of themselves. National polls show a lack of trust in the federal government and a...

Fossil fuels remain the dominant source of energy in the United States and throughout the world because they remain superior to current alternatives. Many energy policies now championed or in the early stages of implementation, however, envision a rapid transition to renewables as if all energy sources were of equal...

Paraphrased from Shana Davidson’s article “Six Secrets of Direct Mail” from SPN News, September/October 2013:
1. Use the word “you” a lot in your letter.
2. Make your letter skimmable by using short paragraphs and underline key phrases.
3. Use a unique envelope size or color or put a photo on it to...

SparkFreedom had a webinar recently on what a social media policy is and why your non-profit might want to consider having one. Dave Buer of the Sutherland Institute and Sara Johnson of SparkFreedom discuss:
...

Are you trying to figure out how to identify prospective givers of transformation gifts? Daniel Erspamer of the State Policy Network has written a brief outline of practices to follow. Here are the first three items:
Build & Maintain a Priorities Plan: It should be updated in real time and be...

There’s no question that the Left has dominated conservatives online in recent years.
The best example is the 2012 Obama campaign, which ran circles around Mitt Romney’s digital operation. The Obama campaign signed up millions of Americans for e-mails, coordinated get-out-the-vote efforts online, and raised a whopping $525 million via the...

Behind President Barack Obama’s gripe to Bill O’Reilly that FOX News is always unfair to him stands a deeper resentment that has poisoned the soul of progressives for some time: Hollywood and academia might still be firmly in the grip of the orthodox Left, but part of the media has...

During the Great Recession and its aftermath, few issues in state politics have been as contentious as fiscal policy. Here in North Carolina, where I direct the work of the John Locke Foundation, lawmakers have gone back and forth on taxes. When the recession opened up a massive hole in...

Conservatives, if they prepare now, have a golden opportunity to fix America’s health care system with the free market ideas they have been developing for decades. The Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) is coming apart at the seams, and the real world experience of the Left’s health policy agenda brings unfriendly...

U.S. foreign policy is in shambles, characterized by drift and incoherence. It is at best a-strategic at worst anti-strategic, lacking any concept of how to apply limited resources to obtain foreign policy goals—because this administration has articulated no clear goals or objectives to be achieved. The foreign policy failures of...

U.S. foreign policy is in shambles, characterized by drift and incoherence. It is at best a-strategic at worst anti-strategic, lacking any concept of how to apply limited resources to obtain foreign policy goals—because this administration has articulated no clear goals or objectives to be achieved. The foreign policy failures of...